Fate
by Auchen
Summary: Five ways that Jonathan Crane's life could have turned out had circumstances been different.


**A/N: **All these scenarios are based on Scarecrow: Year One, as I have not yet been able to find Batman Annual #19.

**Warnings**: Implied character death and referenced child abuse.

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><p><strong>I.<strong> Karen Keeny never meets Gerald Crane. She passes him on the street one day, and her head is turned by his handsome face, but he soon disappears into the shifting mass of pedestrians.

**II**. Jonathan never is able to get into Pigeon's class and never becomes a professor.

Pigeon hears of the boy from the pursed, whispering mouths of other students, about their peer's oddities, how he holes up in his cave of a room like some solitary scholar of old. He doesn't have friends, and something about him is just…_off._

The closest Pigeon ever gets to speaking to Crane is one night in the library. It is in a dim corner where someone has forgotten to fix the wiring of the overhead lights. Pigeon hasn't found anything in the section he wants and as he turns to leave he almost bumps into someone.

"Excuse me," Pigeon says, taking a step back.

The figure in front of him says nothing, just towers up into the darkness like a fairy tale giant. He clutches a stack of books in thin, twig-like arms. His eyes narrow in a glare. Pigeon almost flinches, because there's something sharp and dark in those eyes.

The two part without another word.

Years later, Pigeon is sitting at home on a cool morning. He lifts his cup from the front page of the newspaper.

There beneath the circle of a brown coffee stain is a headline saying that a killer dressed as a scarecrow is on the loose. Pigeon just shakes his head at the state of the world and turns to the Opinions section.

**III**. She lets the birds peck too long until all that's left is a bloodied, crumpled body of a boy in a suit jacket ripped by the jagged beaks of crows.

At his funeral, the other inhabitants of Arlen call it a horrific act of nature. Tragic because of its senselessness. But then, that's how animals are, aren't they?

Only one person knows any differently. And the tears shed by that person are not purely false. She hadn't meant to kill him, but well, the birds had finished the task she had contemplated when the boy was born.

It was for the best.

**IV**. Granny is not cruel. She is not the best parent figure anyone could ask for, but she does her best to be a mother when the last time she held an infant her hands were not wrinkled by the passing of years.

Jonathan grows up sheltered and somewhat lonely in the belly of the giant mansion, with the ghost of past glories showing in the dust covered staircases and chandeliers.

But he never has to cover rings of finger shaped bruises with long sleeved shirts, and he does not have to sweat under hot Georgia sun with a turtle neck covering up claw marks.

Jonathan is still smart and bookish and is teased by some of his classmates, and in junior high the scrawny boy becomes an awkward young man. But things do eventually become better, and he even graduates high school with a few acquaintances (they would call him their friend, but no one ever knew him well enough to truly hold that title).

He goes to college and majors in Chemistry, though he harbors a pet interest in Psychology. Eventually he becomes a professor at Gotham University. He's known for being challenging but engaging.

Dr. Crane publishes some well-regarded research papers, but his name is never renowned beyond the circles of his colleagues.

**V.** Somehow, Jonathan is able to run away from his crumbling corpse of a home one night when he's fourteen. Granny is enraged, but still somehow relieved. The residents of Arlen look for him everywhere but never find him.

He travels Georgia and becomes a thief, gradually working his way up the hierarchy in the criminal underworld. Once grown, he's made it to Atlanta. He's a thug for hire that people call Scarecrow because of his appearance. People who know him a little better call him the Professor because of how smart he seems to fancy himself.

But pretentious or not, he gets the job done, so it doesn't really matter in the end.

The most Jonathan ever hears about a place called "Gotham" is a few times in the news due to one madman or another wreaking havoc on its streets.

Jonathan is glad he doesn't live there. The competition would be unfortunate.


End file.
